Google Embraces Responsive Design, Recommends You Do the Same

Responsive Book: Google's Chromebook site as seen by a phone (left) and a tablet.

If you’ve been waiting for responsive design to go mainstream, wait no more. While The Boston Globe‘s responsive redesign made a big splash in the developer community, The Globe has nothing on the latest web giant to throw its weight behind responsive design — Google.

That’s right, Google is now suggesting developers use responsive design tools like media queries to handle the variety of screens now accessing the web.

It’s not the most thorough tutorial we’ve seen, nor is it the best — Google conflates breakpoints with device width, something we’d recommend against — but nitpicking aside, Google’s official blessing will no doubt help move responsive design to the front burner in many people’s minds.

It’s worth noting that while a tutorial is nice, Google isn’t necessarily making the leap to responsive websites for its own properties. Indeed, sites like Gmail or Reader are excellent arguments for maintaining separate mobile designs. If your “site” is actually a web app as complex as Gmail then we suggest doing what Google does — hiring a fleet of developers to build an maintain separate websites for different size screens.

Chances are, though, that your site isn’t that complex and doesn’t have the developer teams that Google can afford. Even Google uses responsive design when it makes sense. To go along with the new tutorial, Google offers up that the new Chromebook website is responsive, which shows off the company’s responsive design chops.